Something Rich and Strange
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Old fic, just moved to the correct section. Some time after Nemo's rescue, Gill must help Nemo track down his father, who has mysteriously vanished.
1. A journey begins

            DISCLAIMER: Finding Nemo and all related characters and indicia are the property of Disney and Pixar, as if you didn't already know.

_…nothing of him that doth fade_

_But doth suffer a sea-change_

_Into something rich and strange…_

In the darkness of a forgotten shipwreck, below the drifting clouds of lookdowns and silversides that darted and wheeled overhead, beneath the thermocline that separated warm surface water from chilled deep current, a lone Moorish Idol lay in the empty carcass of a brass ship's lantern.

            Gill had left the others shortly after their escape into Sydney Harbour—Bloat had been useful for once in popping open the bags that imprisoned them—and drifted off on his own. Now that he had finally escaped the dentist's prison, and the ocean was his own to explore, he found himself strangely miserable. Swimming around in the confines of the twenty-gallon tank had been one thing; this wide brilliant world, limitless, full of wonders, exhausted his strength so quickly he found it difficult even to find shelter to escape the barracuda schools that passed overhead; the accident that had ruined his fin and striped his right side with ugly scars had also weakened him considerably, and the muscles that once could have sent him speeding through the water had atrophied in the confined environment of the tank. He hurt all over.

            The pain didn't bother him; he had learned to live with that, long ago. It was the odd empty feeling, rather than the ache, which sent him down into this dark hiding place. He found himself waking in the night and wondering where they all were—Jacques, the cleaner shrimp, Bloat, Gurgle, Peach, Deb, even Bubbles, whose mind might never recover from his long captivity—and Sharkbait. 

            _Nemo, Gill corrected himself. __His name was Nemo._

            He wondered what had happened to the little clownfish. All drains led to the ocean, but perhaps there were filters in the drains, like in the tank…Gill found himself not wanting to think about that, not wanting to think about having sent Nemo to his death. He could only vaguely remember being young himself, free in the ocean, before his capture and his imprisonment; he hoped he had been right about the drains.

            Oh, he hoped he had been right.

            He shifted in the corroded brass curve of the lantern and looked out at the water; dimly he could make out the shapes of a couple of spider crabs wandering over the sand and picking at fragments of food. They were arguing. Spider crabs always argued.

            "…and they say he saved a whole netful of fish! Just pulled the net right offa the boat and let 'em all go!"

            "Yeah, whatever, you're so full of algae you squeak. Gimme that!"

            "I saw it first!"

            "Oh, yeah?"

            The speck in question floated away from them as they circled and clacked their claws belligerently. Gill sighed, closing his eyes. 

            "…and you know that kid of his, the one he went on the big ol' quest to find? Meeno, or whatever his name was?"

            "Huh?" More clacking.

            "Bilbo, or something, anyway, he's been comin' round here lookin' for him!"

            Gill opened an eye. Spider crab A was meandering sideways towards the wreck, picking at shreds of organic matter that drifted in the current. Spider crab B was still talking. "Man, it's like, hey, can't two members of that family ever stay found at the same time?"

            "Eh, his dad prolly got sick of him an' went off to find another mate."

            "Clownfish mate for life, you idiot."

            "Do not!"

            "Do too!"

            "Do not!"

            "Do too!"

            "Excuse me," said Gill, out of the darkness. Only his eyes and the tip of his dorsal sail were visible. He stayed back and let his voice drop lower, become more gravelly. "You're talking about Nemo?"

            Both spider crabs froze. "Who's there?" one of them quavered.

            "Never mind who I am," said Gill. "Tell me what you know about Nemo."

            "H-he's a clownfish, 'bout this big—" crab B gestured with his claws—"and he's got a magic fin on one side, it brings him luck."

            "Oh, like hell it does, it's just a gimpy fin," said the other crab. "He's been nosin' around here looking for his dad. Martin, or Sturgeon, or Tuna, or whatever his name is. Seems he's missing."

            "Then Nemo's alive," said Gill. 

            "Yeah he's alive, and real irritating," said the bolder of the two. "Never shuts up. 'Have you seen my dad? Have you seen my dad? Have you seen my dad?'"

            Gill narrowed his eyes. "When did you last see him?"

            "Yesterday. Headed toward the harbour."

            Gill felt his ectothermic blood grow a little colder. The harbour was a place of seagulls and pelicans and those great spinning blades attached to the back of boats. Nemo must have survived the drains, but Gill didn't lay much on his chances of surviving the harbour alone.

            With a flick of his notched tail he slipped out of the lantern and emerged from the shadows, fixing the spider crabs with a steel gaze, and swam off in the direction of the harbour's cloud of silt. The crabs watched him go.

            After a while, one of them said, "Who the hell was that?"

            "Dunno, but he's got a really funny-looking fin."

            "Maybe it's lucky."

            "It better be. With looks like that he's not gonna get far in the world." Both crabs laughed at that for just long enough to forget what they were laughing about, and resumed their normal bickering once more.


	2. A reunion

Disclaimer as above: I own nothing, I'm just, er, borrowing them for a while. 

_…Full fathom five thy father lies…_

            Nemo was getting tired. He'd ridden the EAC for a while, which had saved time, but the leads he had on where his father might be were becoming less and less credible. He had no idea why Marlin had vanished, and the terror he'd felt at first had become an empty sinking awareness that he might be gone for good.

            Dory had left a few days before to see if she could find the school of moonfish to ask them if they'd come and do impressions for Mr. Ray's class, and Nemo had absolutely no problem believing that she'd gotten distracted by something—anything—and forgotten where she was going and why. It wasn't worrying him; he knew all the fish around their area of the reef were aware of Dory's memory issues, and would be able to direct her on her way. He was much more concerned about his father.

            After they'd come back in triumph from their adventure, Marlin had loosened up considerably; Nemo had an idea that his encounter with the surfer turtles of the EAC might have had something to do with that. He himself had been thrilled by the crazy ride.

            And he had to admit that Dory was good for Marlin. Even his deep-seated paranoia couldn't withstand her unrelenting cheeriness, and she could almost always wring a smile out of him. Nevertheless, Nemo really couldn't see his dad disappearing on his own without a really good reason, and as far as he knew, there was no reason at all why he should leave the reef. 

            Early that morning, he had passed the outflow pipe where he had come out of the drain—almost a month ago—and couldn't suppress a shiver as he thought of that terrifying plunge into stinking darkness. He wondered what had become of Gill and the rest of the Tank Gang—crazy as they'd been, they had been kind to him, and there was something about Gill that Nemo couldn't help admiring. Gill was…tough, and cool, and all the things Nemo kind of wished he could be. He'd never met another fish with a messed-up fin; he'd thought he was the only one.

            Nemo sighed and just kept on swimming. The last hint he'd gotten was from one of those crazy spider-crab things that had tried to eat him before; they'd pointed him into the murky harbour water and gone on pummeling one another with their claws. He didn't hold out much hope for finding Marlin in the vastness of the harbour, but he was not going to give up. His dad had searched the whole ocean for him and brought him safe home; he had to do the best he could to live up to that.

            The silt was getting thicker; he could hardly see where he was going. _Better go up to the surface and take a look. He knew perfectly well that the surface was dangerous, but he wasn't getting anywhere like this, and time might be running out for Marlin. _

***

            Gill was exhausted. The silt in the harbour water made it difficult to breathe, and his ruined fin was really beginning to hurt. He'd been swimming hard all day, and hadn't encountered a single creature who'd caught sight of a young clownfish; he was beginning to wonder if the crabs had made the whole thing up. Nevertheless, he forged ahead. He wondered vaguely where the hell Nemo's father had got to—Nemo hadn't described him as being the adventurous type at all, and had hardly believed Nigel when he said Marlin was in hot pursuit of him; but the clownfish with the silly name had made it all the way here from the Reef, apparently, and had survived attack by sharks and deadly jellyfish and whales, so he must be tougher than everyone had thought. Gill didn't believe he would have left his son again unless he had no other choice.

            The water was foul. He coughed, trying to clear the grit from his gills, and swam upwards towards the surface; it was often clearer the further up you got. The murk thinned a little as he rose, enough for him to catch a glimmer of colour up ahead, a bright flash of something moving in the water.

            He'd passed enough rubbish in the water to assume it was nothing more than a floating soda can or a crumpled wrapper, but the glint was moving too fast and too independently for that. Gill put on an extra burst of speed, and was soon able to make out the fact that whatever-it-was was…orange. And white. 

            _Nemo?_

            He swam faster. What the hell was the kid doing up there at the surface where he could get picked off by the first hungry pelican or seagull that came by? Hadn't his dad taught him that the ocean was a dangerous place?

            Coughing, Gill ducked a floating six-pack ring and tried to catch up with Nemo. "Hey!" he yelled. "Kid!"

            Ahead of him, Nemo turned, lucky fin flickering, and was about to say something when a vast yellow beak exploded through the surface and plucked him neatly out of the water. Horrified, Gill flung himself upwards and broke the surface in time to see a happy pelican winging his way across the harbour to a handy buoy.

            There was nothing he could do; still, he followed as fast as his injury would let him, ignoring the silt clogging his throat and the rising fatigue poisons in his blood, following for no other reason than that he couldn't just stay there and watch the kid get digested. Not after he'd spent a whole damn day trying to find him in the first place. 

            Dimly he could make out the vertical shadow of the buoy's chain rising to the surface, and forced himself to swim faster. _Getting old,_ he thought. _You'd have been able to reach it a minute ago if you were still in any shape at all. And hadn't sliced hell out of one fin trying to escape from that goddamn tank._

            But the chain was getting closer, and he thought he could hear the raspy voice of the pelican—perhaps it hadn't swallowed Nemo yet…

            There was a splash above him, but Gill had pushed too far too fast; even as he reached the crusted chain and began to make his way up it, the water around him flickered and began to go dim, and he found himself sinking into darkness like a dropping stone.

**

            "Well, I'll ask around," said Nigel, shrugging his wings at the little clownfish bobbing next to the buoy. "Can't say as I've seen him round these parts since he came to find you."

            "I know," Nemo squeaked as a wavelet nearly knocked him against the concrete. "It's not like him. Something bad must have happened."

            "I'll ask. Stay around here, would you? It's dangerous out in the open water. And keep under the surface."

            Nemo nodded and disappeared with a flick of his tail, heading down into the green depths. If anyone had seen his father around here, Nigel would have heard of it; he kept an eye on everything that happened in his harbour. Without Nigel's help he would probably be dead by now, or in Darla's possession—he kind of thought he'd prefer just to be dead.

            That was odd. The only fish he normally saw in these waters were the plain, larger species like the ones he and Dory and Marlin had managed to free from the net—but far below, almost on the bottom, he caught sight of a stripy speck that looked awfully like a reef fish. He swam down to investigate; yeah, looked like a reef fish, looked actually like Gill…only it was lying motionless on the silt at the bottom of the harbour.

            Nemo gasped. Not Gill. He couldn't be dead—he'd survived being sliced up with dental tools, for heaven's sake, he was tough—

            And how had he gotten here? The last time Nemo had seen the Moorish Idol, he'd been gasping out his life on the instrument tray right before he'd shoved Nemo into the drain that had, in fact, led to the ocean. Had Gill managed to follow him out?

            Nemo settled to the silt bottom and looked sadly at the body of his friend. Gill lay on his side, the ragged tracery of his scars just visible in the murky light. Nemo flicked his tail and drifted a little closer to examine the remains of Gill's right fin.

            It moved.

            A little, and then again. Nemo stared as he saw the gill-slits open a tiny bit and close again. Gill was breathing, after all. Relief washed over Nemo like clear water. He wondered what had happened to him—was he sick? Was he hurt?

            Nemo had to get help.


	3. A meeting

Disclaimer as before: Finding Nemo and all related characters are the property of Disney and Pixar. 

            It was dark. Gill blinked a few times, trying to make out what had happened to the dim glow of Mount Wannahockaloogie; normally there was a red-lit stream of bubbles drifting from its summit, even in the middle of the night. Perhaps the power had gone off…?

            He squinted. It didn't feel like the tank…too cold, for one thing…and as he struggled upright out of the sandy muck he realized that it was difficult to breathe, and that had never been the case in the tank…

            Reality hit him like an undertow. Freedom. Nemo. The kid. The pelican's bright-yellow bill—and the darkness that had overtaken him as he'd struggled to follow them. He coughed up silt and let his eyes close again. _Failed. I said I'd keep an eye on him. I failed._

            He turned to swim away, back into the deeper waters, when a little voice drifted his way. _Oh, great, now I'm hearing ghosts. Fantastic._

            "…Gill?"

            _Wonder what a ghost clownfish looks like?_

            He turned, slowly. A mote of dim orange was approaching, flickering a bit as moonlight filtered down through the murk. "Gill?" it said again.

            "Nemo?"

            _Looks pretty solid, actually…_

            The mote drew closer, and now he could see the kid's lucky fin fluttering madly away as he hurried. "Gill?" Nemo was panting. "Gill, oh, jeez, are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?" He swirled around the Moorish Idol, eyes wide with concern. Gill just stared.

            "You're not dead," he said after a moment. "How…? Last time I saw you, you'd just been eaten by a pelican…"

            "No, no, no," Nemo sputtered. "That was Nigel, he was giving me a lift, he said it was dangerous in the open water…"

            _Figures. I'm an idiot. And now I got the kid all freaked because I…what, passed out? Swooned away like some stupid angelfish female? Out loud he said, "I'm fine, kid. What's going on with your dad?"_

            Nemo sighed, drooping a little. "He's gone. I don't know where, he just disappeared a couple days ago and I've been trying to follow him…"

            "Hey," said Gill, trying to make his voice as cheerful as possible, "it's gonna be okay. We'll find him." _Somehow._ "Did Nigel know anything about it?"

            "He says he's still looking. One of the pelicans on the other side of the harbour said he'd seen an orange fish over there this morning…" Nemo's voice trailed off, miserably. "I hope he's okay."

            "Your dad's tough," Gill assured him. "Hey, he fought off three sharks and a whole school of jellyfish, right? He can take care of himself."

            Nemo looked a little brighter. "You really think so?"

            "Yeah, I do."

            "Okay," said Nemo, and Gill reflected that it had been a long, long time since he himself had been that easily convinced of _anything_. "Are you sure you're okay? You scared me. What happened?"

            Gill winced. "I'm fine. Never better. I, uh, guess I was a little tired." He executed an energetic spiral to show how fine he was, and ended up coughing again; there was silt stuck in his gills. He fought it down and gave Nemo a grin. "Dusty round here, isn't it?"

            Nemo squinted at him, but apparently let it go. "Nigel said he'd check back tonight and let us know about the orange fish they saw on the other side of the harbour."

            "Fair enough. He's meeting you at the buoy?"

            Nemo nodded. Together, they swam upwards, following the darker shape of the chain, until they were just under the surface. Moonlight traced networks of silver over Nemo's stripes, making him look ghostly again. Gill was struck by the kid's simple courage—not many juveniles would have had the guts to come all this way alone, without help, without defense. The ocean was a dangerous place. He thought he might understand a little of what made parents so damn overprotective.

            "Gill?"

            "Yeah?"

            "Where are the rest of the guys? How come they're not with you? Bloat, and Gurgle, and Deb, and the rest of them?"

            Gill sighed, fighting down a cough. "They went off together, exploring. They'd never been free before, they wanted to see the sights."

            "What about you?" Nemo regarded him with wide guileless eyes.

            "Oh, I just kind of went my own way." He avoided the kid's gaze, inventing. "Went back home, as a matter of fact."

            "Where's your home?"

            "Uh, not all that far from here."

            "Is that where your family lives?"

            "I don't have a family," he said, absently looking at the surface. Nemo fell silent, backing off a little. There was a slightly awkward pause.

            "Gill?"

            "Yeah?"

            "Why did you come back?"

            He turned to look at the clownfish. "I…uh…happened to be in the area."

            "Were you following me?"

            Gill sighed. "Yeah, I was, kid. I overheard some spider crabs talking about you trying to find your dad, and I…thought I'd just keep an eye on you. This isn't a great area, and you don't know your way around."

            Nemo said nothing, and Gill turned away, staring into the darkness.

            "Gill?"

            "Yeah?"

            "Thanks."

            **

            Marlin slid down to the bottom of his tiny prison, aching all over from his attempts to bash his way out. Two days now he'd been shut in this…box…all alone, sealed in except for the two times a day one of the humans in white dropped little pellets into the water. Marlin had eventually figured out that this was what the humans considered food, and while he was certainly open to trying new things, he'd come to the conclusion that humans were all both evil and insane. 

            Terror had given way to worry and misery, as the time went by. He couldn't help thinking of Nemo, all alone again, wondering where his father had gone, why he'd left him behind. It had all happened so quickly.

            He'd been swimming around with some of the other parents close to the Dropoff, waiting for Mr. Ray to come back with the class, and had seen something orange darting around way up close to the surface; from a distance it had looked so much like Coral that he'd zoomed away from the others before thinking, his heart overruling his brain—he knew Coral was gone, it had to be someone else, something else, but the urge to find out was too strong—and made his way up to the surface. The orange thing darted away, and Marlin had followed, over the edge and round the swirling stems of sea-fans, avoiding reef outcrops, desperate to catch a memory between his fins. And then, in a flash, there had been silvery mesh all around him, and he was rising helplessly out of the water, and someone had _caught him_…

            It was a much larger boat than the one which had stolen Nemo away; all white and silver, and the humans on it were dressed identically in green suits. More markings like the words Dory had read on the mask were everywhere, on the humans' suits, on the side of the boat, even on the box he found himself being lowered into. He had shut his eyes and waited to be killed, but nothing had happened to him besides the lid of the box shutting and being reopened here, in this vast brilliant room, full of boxes just like his own.

            There was movement, and then a splash. Marlin opened an eye and quickly shut it again as one of the white-suited humans passed by his box. He wondered what they were going to do to him. Fry him in butter, perhaps. 

            "'Ullo," said a cheerful voice close by his ear. He jumped a little, fins flickering, and turned to find himself face to face with a remarkably funny-looking creature. It was curled in the bottom of the next box along, a heap of golden-brown tentacles spattered with brilliant blue rings. As he watched, the tentacles curled and uncurled themselves in ceaseless motion, with a kind of liquid grace Marlin normally associated with floating seaweed. "Who're you, then?" it asked.

            "Marlin," said Marlin, staring. 

            "Pleased to meetcha. I'm a Hapalochlaena maculosa, but you can call me Mac, everyone does. Haven't seen you before, are you new here?"

            "Yeah," said Marlin, trying to figure out what was kicking his brain about his new acquaintance. Something about blue rings. "Er. Where are we?"

            "The Sydney Oceanographical Biology Research Institute," said Mac. "SOBRI for short. I've been here for _months._" He sounded rather proud of this fact. "We're at the cutting edge of marine biology here, mate."

            "Wonderful," said Marlin sourly. "So they're not going to eat us?"

            "Eat us? Bless your 'eart, no! They're going to study you. I'm one of their prize specimens. I overheard Dr. Wood say I had the most potent venom of any bluering he'd ever examined."

            "Venom?"

            "Yep." Mac lifted a couple of his tentacles and showed Marlin his pointed little beak. "I've got enough poison to paralyze ten full-size humans, I have. 'S called TTX, it's a potent neurotoxin that blocks the movement of sodium ions across neural membranes by attaching to a Na+ channel receptor and capping the Na+ channel. Paralyzes you." He settled back down again comfortably. 

            Marlin, who had understood perhaps one word in ten of Mac's explanation, backed away to the farthest corner of his tank. That was it, he remembered now, when he was just a hatchling; his mother had warned him about the danger of the blue-ringed octopus. Terrifying things. He had been right, the sea wasn't safe, and neither was this SOBRI place…

            "What's the matter?" Mac was absently tying his tentacles into clove-hitches and untying them again.

            "Nothing."

            "C'mon, you've gone positively yellow. What's up, mate?"

            Marlin sighed. "Well, first off, I've been captured and taken away from my son, he's far too young to survive on his own, it's dangerous…and now I'm stuck here in a box next to a creature that can kill me in seconds with something to do with sodium, and I don't know what I'm going to do. If you must know."

            Mac had uncurled himself completely now and was spread out, tentacles extended like the rays of a star.  "Blimey, that's awful," he said, ignoring the remark about his lethality. "Taken away from your son."

            "Yes. He was captured a little while ago and held in a tank in some dentist's waiting room. P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney. I had to find him."

            Mac blinked a slotted eye at him. "Ey…I've heard of you. Marlin. That's right, you fought off three dirty great sharks and rode the EAC all the way from the reef! Cor, you're famous. What was your kid's name again?"

            "Nemo." Marlin sighed, drifting to the bottom of the tank. "I'll never see him again."

            "Don't say that, mate," said Mac. "We're gonna get you out of here. Can't let Nemo down, can we?"

            Marlin blinked. "What?"

            "Gonna break you out. You're a hero, y'know, I'd never be able to live with myself if I didn't help you out."

            "Th-thank you," he stammered. "How? I mean, there's no way back to the ocean from here…"

            "Sure there is, mate. Just gotta find it. Now, we have to wait for a while until all the scientists knock off for the day. I'll see what I can do about getting some of the others together, we'll find a way." 

tbc


	4. Many dramatic happenings

Disclaimer: as before, I own nothing but this rather hackneyed plot. Finding Nemo, the characters and all indicia thereof are the property of Disney/Pixar: no copyright infringement is intended and no money, of course, is being made.

Oddly enough I came back to this fic only through a sudden recent resurgence in my old interests in oceanography, deepsea exploration, 1980s James Cameron movies shot in abandoned nuclear reactor tanks, and the oeuvre of the Cousteau family. I bought the DVD of _Finding Nemo_ and have rewatched it several times, and still love it as much as I did back when I saw it twice in the theater. Why do I love it? Two reasons. One is a Moorish Idol and the other is Pixar's exquisite attention to tiny details.

* * *

Hark, now I hear them— 

_Ding-dong, ding-dong bell. _

There are few sounds quite so mournful as a buoy's bell clanging in mist: it is a very specific and very effective noise, one which the listener will never mistake for any other, and will never really forget.

Hanging under the concrete base of the buoy's tower, looking up at the dapples of moonlight on the surface of the water, Nemo let himself think the things he knew, somehow, he wasn't really old enough to be thinking. _I never really got to be a kid, not like other kids, though. I guess I had to grow up different._

Not that he was grown up. Far from it; and the presence of Gill, a little way away, invisible except for the long drifting white arc of his dorsal sail in the diffuse moonlight, gave him a sense of security he badly needed. But despite Gill's being there, Nemo knew that this time it was unlikely they'd find his father jamming filters to escape a tank, or dancing around with plastic water-plants around his middle like a hula skirt. The boat that had taken him away (was it Tad who'd called them 'butts,' or was that Pearl?) was far, far bigger than the one Nemo had caught his unintentional ride on, and its twin screws had vanished far, far into the depths beyond any of the reef fish's range.

Still he'd tried. He'd had no choice, no thought, no concept of doing anything else than swimming off alone to find his father, exactly as Marlin had done for him, and bringing him home safe and sound. He wondered what he was going to do when Nigel came back with no news whatsoever.

"Hey, kid." Gill's voice was rasping, sounded painful. Nemo wasn't at all sure the Moorish Idol was anything like a fathom close to okay. "Look, over there. Whale."

Distantly, through the murk, the vast smooth flank of a humpback could be seen undulating by. "Your dad caught a ride in one of them?"

"Yeah. Him and Dory. Cause, uh, Dory can speak whale, and so she was all "take us to Sydney Harbour" and the whale was all "okay, sure, I'm gonna sneeze you out my blowhole now" and they were shot like a hundred feet in the air with a bunch of, uh, whale snot. That's the scientific term. Mister Ray said so."

Gill turned to him in the murk and looked very odd indeed for a moment before he started to laugh. He laughed so hard that it turned into a nasty coughing fit, and he wiped at his eyes with his good fin. "Kid," he said when he could speak, "I have missed you."

The buoy clanged above them, and a triangular yellow beak broke the surface. "Nigel!" Nemo cried, and darted upwards. Gill was again struck by how _small_ he was, a tiny mote of orange and white determination. He followed, more slowly, and poked his snout out of the water to get a look at the pelican.

Nigel was excited, in mid de-brief. "Nemo! Good news!—I talked to the bloke who saw the orange fish over by the other side of the harbour. Little orange fish with stripes, he said, it was in a big clear box thing full of water and these other humans in green outfits were taking the fish and a bunch of others into a big white building called SOBRI."

"Sobri?" Gill asked, quirking a brow ridge. Nigel blinked.

"Stone the crows, Gill, 'aven't seen you in a while! Enjoying the freedom of the ocean wave?"

"Oh, yeah," Gill coughed. "It's just peachy. What's this Sobry thing about?"

"Oh, he said it was some institute. Research."

"Institute?" Nemo asked. "Uh….what's an institute?"

"It's a place where they do experiments and learn things."

"What's an asperiment?"

"Well, you know how when the dentist didn't know how to use one of his new tools very well he'd try it out on a patient to see what happe…." Nigel wound down, like a gramophone running out of go. "Um."

"I've got to get there! I have to save my dad from drills!" Nemo was swimming almost in a circle with the thrust inequality between his left and right fins. Gill reached out and steadied him.

"Slow down, Sharkbait. Assess the situation before acting blindly. –Nigel, did this friend of yours say anything else about this institute?"

"Gill! They're gonna drill holes in my dad! We have to do something!"

"He, er, said it was right next to that big marina with all the powerboats in it…they go out a lot on boats, the green institute humans." Nigel was looking horribly embarrassed.

"Do me a favour, Nigel, would you? Get us there? With alacrity?"

Five minutes later Gill was regretting this bitterly. Regretting pretty much everything in his life was par for the course, but he seemed to be doing some intensely stupid things lately and not learning from the experiences. It was depressing.

He lay gasping and choking in the little reservoir of seawater in the bottom of Nigel's bill-pouch. The oxygen levels in the water where the pelican had picked them up weren't great to begin with, and five minutes of breathing had almost exhausted them. Nemo was clearly terrified, and he was doing his damnedest not to scare the kid any further, but it was difficult when he couldn't _breathe_ and every line the dental blades had drawn on him burned like live wires. Should have sent the kid and come on after as fast as he could….no, that made no sense….should have come on ahead himself and left the kid safe…

Red-black swirls of asphyxia were beginning to turn in front of his eyes. He didn't hear the startled "awk" as beside him the kid he'd once named Sharkbait tugged on a piscivorean bird's tongue and flat-out ordered it to duck down to sea level and refresh the water level. He didn't hear Nemo's yelled conversation with Nigel—and that was a good thing, as it went into some detail about his original escape attempt and how long it had taken him to recover from the injuries—but he did hear the inane cries of seagulls as they circled down to the marina beside the white boat with SOBRI stencilled on its fantail.

_Hey_, he thought. _I'm not dead. _

Nemo was shaking him. "Gill! Gill, are you okay? We found the boat! We found the spermenter's boat!"

He coughed weakly, his gills flaring. Nigel flapped down between the two boats and disgorged them into the water; he could barely keep upright, but he tried. At the surface again, the bird was yelling at them.

"—can't move any further without attracting attention! I'll try to find you a way in!"

In the water he could catch his breath, slowly, and hung in the murk, panting. Nemo tumbled down toward him and butted him in the side, wriggling under his good fin, his eyes huge in the dimness of the nighttime harbour. "G-Gill….?"

"I'm okay, kid," he said, and meant it: most of the silt was cleared from his gills' delicate internal folds. "I'm okay. Thanks, you were a lifesaver back there."

"I owe you," Nemo said simply.

* * *

Marlin was amazed.

Apparently the inmates of SOBRI were _happy_ to be here. At least that was the impression he got from the lively conversation between tanks and the high-eights exchanged every time one of the octopus specimens crawled into an adjoining tank.

That had nearly given him heart failure. He'd been staring glumly out as the lights in the lab flickered and went off, leaving only a few screensavers' glow and the LEDs on the computers to light the long space, and had been thinking about how just last week he had told jokes to _four separate fish_ and each of them had _laughed_ at the right moments, when something tapped him on the tailfin.

"Aaaagh!" He'd whirled in a crazed cavitation of bubbles. Mac grinned at him, inasmuch as an octopus is capable of grinning, about two inches away.

"Sorry, mate, didn't mean to startle ya. Just on my way to dig up some support, yeah? No worries."

Frozen in shock, Marlin had watched as the octopus _flowed_ up the sheer side of the tank, extended a delicate tentacle-tip through the mesh at the top, and shoved the catch free: a moment later he had heaved himself up into the open air in a glistening lump of browny-gold dotted with blue, and was _walking _across the tops of the tanks.

_I'm sick_, Marlin had thought. _That's it. I've got Pfiesteria and it's making me delirious. I even feel warm. Yes, definitely sick. I'll wake up in my own anemone and everything will be just fine, they'll have called the surgeonfish in…_

Now, two hours later, the racks of tanks were alive with conversation. Someone was talking about security cards, someone else discussing tanks on wheels, a violent argument was going on about scientific principles and the value of research, and a crumply plasticy sort of noise revealed itself to be a transparent bag of the sort he'd last seen a possum-playing Nemo floating in, on its way from a countertop on the octopus express.

Mac flopped back down into the tank. "Here y'are, Marlin. Swim on in there and we'll work out some way to get ya down a drain and out into the harbour. I tie a proper knot, I do, you'll be nice and watertight down in there."

The thought of staying here was intolerable, but the thought of getting into a plastic bag and being rolled down a drain by a tetrodotoxin-bearing octopoid was about four point nine times worse. "Um," he said. "I…don't think that's a good idea."

Mac wriggled his tentacles. "C'mon, mate, it's a beaut plan! You'll be safe as houses, just have to get you rollin' and you can slip down a sink."

He was saved from replying by the sudden advent of a repetitive thudding noise from somewhere outside the room, and a swinging light.

"Oh bugger," Mac said. "Night watchman! Cave! Everyone back in their own tanks!"

There was a flurry of splashing activity, and then nothing—and then a wide waving beam of light played across the tanks.

Marlin decided the time had come where he could be reasonably expected to have passed the threshold for number of terrifying events in one day, and therefore sensibly fainted.


End file.
